


Finding Home

by biblionerd07



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean is an alcoholic, Future Fic, Heaven, M/M, Post-Series, big time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:03:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1369861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost thirty years into the future, Hell is closed, Heaven is closed, Abaddon is dead, the Mark of Cain is gone--but Dean still can't quite find his way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Home

**Author's Note:**

> Heh, so, I set out to write a short, fluffy Dean/Cas scene that involves a front porch and lemonade and love but then I sat down to write and my hand slipped and this came out, mostly likely from the influence of the song "1000 Sundowns" by Emma Louise that I _highly_ suggest everyone in the whole world listen to. *shrugs* Front porch fluff shall be saved for another day.

It is summer, and the air is stifling and humid, hanging around like a tangible thing, covering Dean’s skin and plastering his shirt to his back, sliding beads of moisture down his spine and the tip of his nose. The war is long over. The _wars_ , he should say. Abaddon is dead. Hell’s gates are closed, Crowley on the throne again and locked away. Heaven is closed. The Mark of Cain was lifted from his arm and obliterated, along with the First Blade. Dean pushes his shovel harder into the dirt, fighting the crust of the earth, he thinks. He remembers digging up bones with Sam as children and telling his little brother it was a game, they were digging to China, a hole big enough that they could see right through the world, to get Sam to stop crying out for their father in the black of the night without so much as a flashlight.

He’s digging a garden now, creation and life instead of killing and death. He tries not to let the smell of the upturned dirt twist his stomach from the memories of doing this mechanically, digging fast as he could to stop a vengeful spirit from killing someone he loved and innocent people. He focuses on the sun on the back of his neck, because he has no memories of digging up graves in the sun and the burn of it on his skin is an anchor tethering him to the present. He can’t let himself slip into the past, not when it is summer and he is digging a garden and the wars are over and his soul is his own again, not when the world is saved and it’s been decades and he is here _now_ , here in this place where he lives. Lives may be a strong word.

Dean is gasping for breath now, his heart stuttering against his ribs because hard as he tries he can’t stop the memories from flooding into him, and he’s grateful for the scorching sun and the heavy moisture in the air and the sweat running like rivers across his skin to hide his tears. Heaven, after all, is closed. And there were things closed into heaven Dean did not want closed in there, and it doesn’t matter how far or how fast he digs; Dean can’t block out the memory of Cas’s last gaze at him before those otherworldly blue eyes went blank and scared as his body was yanked from the ground by a blast of light and he disappeared.

He can churn the ground and raise the dirt, but he can’t forget the way Cas’s lips had ghosted across his own, so many years ago before Gadreel and Abaddon and Cain, a lifetime ago, almost a time of innocence in comparison. An apocalypse, Purgatory—such lesser pains than Cas’s grace being ripped from his throat, smaller problems than murder itself flowing through Dean’s veins, easier than the way Cas’s body, no longer a vessel given begrudgingly by Jimmy but just _Cas_ , wore down and broke away in pieces before Dean’s eyes because of another angel’s grace fighting against his insides. He can’t forget Cas’s fingers in his hair and a muffled laugh against his shoulder, legs tangled with his own. He can’t forget soft morning smiles and pie brought by angel delivery seconds after he wished aloud for it. He can’t forget hurt blue eyes ducking his gaze before leaving him, seemingly forever, again and again as he pushed and shoved and sent Cas away. It’s been many, many years and Dean is old now, but his dreams every night are still blue eyes and chapped lips and calloused hands and a voice deeper than the dirt he’s digging in.

“Dean.” The voice behind him makes his throat ache because of the sadness and pity in it and he keeps digging, ignoring the pain in his arms and the pain in his back and most of all the pain in the empty space where he thinks, once upon a time, he must’ve had a heart.

“Dean?” This voice is different, and it makes Dean stop his furious digging because he can’t deny that voice, never could. He turns to face Sam and the blonde trailing behind him, her hair no longer in pigtails these days because she’s at the tail end of being a teenager now, she’s leaving for college soon, and she’s beautiful in a way that makes Dean’s chest ache because her eyes are blue like Sam’s wife’s but not the right blue and Dean wonders if a child with _those_ blue eyes would have spoken in oddly formal sentences, would have tipped a dark head to the side when confused, would have pursed perfectly bowed lips in annoyance.

“There’s my favorite girl.” Dean’s voice is cracked and rough and every word sounds like it’s being pulled from him with difficulty, which it is. He’d thought time was supposed to heal all wounds, but every year ruins him further, cuts him deeper. He is an old man now, ancient in hunter years, and looks older than his time because of the hunting and the drinking and the agony that lives in the cavity of his chest. Each day makes speaking harder, because he longs for the one who understood his glances and silences and double-speaks.

“What are you doing?” She asks.

“Digging a garden.” He tells her simply.

“But it’s not the right season.” She says, brow furrowed in an expression so reminiscent of her father at that age that Dean almost smiles. He glances at the man in question and sees a frown blooming across a face that has gained wrinkles, framed by hair still long as ever but now streaked with gray and kept neat instead of flying wildly.

“It’s fine.” Sam says quietly to his daughter. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a little late. It’s fine.” He looks at Dean now, face set in earnest encouragement. “Things will still grow.”

 _How the tables have turned_ , Dean thinks wryly. He remembers holding Sam’s hand in a dark motel room, sharing a bed and not complaining about the way his little brother clung to him in the night, murmuring platitudes and brushing hair from that forehead back when it was smooth and young. He remembers white lies told to stifle childhood fears, soothing self-conscious thoughts before dates and battles alike. And now here is Sam, concern in every feature of his body, reassuring Dean that his knotted, scarred hands can do something good, not just rain down fire on Heaven and Hell and humanity. Dean forces the corners of his mouth upward, trying to make his face remember how to arrange itself into a smile and sees Sam relax a hair, telling him he’d gotten close enough.

“How about we go inside and have some lemonade?” Dean suggests, ever mindful of his brother and niece with their delicate skin that burns red so easily, mindful of the oppressive humidity causing little tendrils of hair to curl around his niece’s face, ruining her time carefully styling it into straight sheets down her back. They are the reason Dean submitted to central air. He barely notices heat anymore, because he’s felt Hell’s flames lick across his spine and he closed the love of his life—no, his _existence_ , because Cas always insisted death wasn’t the end—into a tomb with the agents of his destruction. Dean doesn’t deserve central air, but his brother with his good heart and his innocent niece and his kind sister-in-law deserve every comfort he can offer, even if that means modifying his ramshackle house to their tastes for the brief afternoons they come to see him, one by one or in pairs or the whole family, trying fruitlessly to make him forget. He’d moved out of the Men of Letters bunker to forget, he’d painted over the blue walls in his house to forget, he’d spent the first few years drinking and fighting and fucking to forget, but nothing works.

His niece chatters in the kitchen and presses a kiss to Dean’s rough cheek in a way that makes him close his eyes because she doesn’t understand his crimes. She knows in a faint, abstract way but has never seen him elbow-deep in a man’s chest, has never seen blood spattered across his face, has never heard his cold voice interrogate a prisoner, has never known the perfect one he destroyed to make it all stop. He didn’t try hard enough to find a way to keep Cas tethered, didn’t love Cas enough to anchor him when the angels came calling, didn’t give Cas enough of a _reason_ , either because he was too afraid or because _Dean_ simply wasn’t enough.

Sam knows Dean’s cup doesn’t house even a drop of lemonade and is straight whiskey, but he’s long since stopped fighting that battle. She, at least, doesn’t quite know it. She knows he drinks too much and she knows her father worries endlessly for his brother, but she’s too pure and untouched by pain to understand it.

Sam’s worry should be enough to get Dean to pull himself together, but he can’t, and Sam’s worry is added to the pile of things Dean can’t fix or atone for. It’s not so much a pile as a mountain. Even as his daughter gushes about the prom, Sam’s eyes are watching Dean, seeking him out. Dean stubbornly keeps his eyes on the beautiful, wholesome teenager in front of him, Sam’s anxiety palpable but ignored.

“We should go, Cassandra.” Sam says, and Dean flinches away from the name. He knows at home and at school people call her Cassie or, even worse—he won’t let the thought continue. In his house, she is Cassandra, because it is the least painful version of her name for him. Sam had asked, back when they were considering the name, sad and so painfully aware of Dean’s anguish.

 _“A way to honor him,”_ Sam had said. _“For saving us.”_

Dean had simply shrugged his blessing and drank himself to sleep. A way to honor him. There would be no need to honor him if Dean had tried harder. It was Purgatory all over again, no matter what Cas said or showed him about what had happened. It all came down to Dean not being _enough_.

Dean’s last remaining shreds of happiness leave, her face a bright smile as she kisses his cheek again and reminds him of her school play that weekend, Sam’s long fingers curling around his upper arm as he murmurs to Dean to take care of himself even though Sam knows it won’t happen. Dean only eats when one of them comes to visit, preferring whiskey in long pulls straight from the bottle. Sam’s wife brings Dean pie almost every week, but it is sawdust against Dean’s tongue and he puts it in the trash, carefully taking the bag out before she comes again to hide the evidence. He won’t repay her heartfelt good intentions that way. He hides his pain as well as he can, just like he always has, but he’s not very good at it anymore. When he catches the sheen of Sam’s eyes as the door closes, Dean sighs and takes a pull from a flask from his pocket. He groans his way across the room and sinks into his armchair, his companion a full bottle that will be empty by morning, and sets to work on his evening’s work of trying to swallow around his lifetime of regrets, the little picture of Cas he’s kept in his wallet for over two decades clutched in his shaking hands.

He knows he is dreaming because nothing hurts anymore—his back doesn’t groan with years of damage, his knees don’t creak, his stomach doesn’t bubble with acid. And he knows he is dreaming because Cas is there, like he always is when Dean dreams, except for some reason the colors are sharper, more real, this time.  
  
“Hello, Dean.” Cas says in his serious voice, and Dean’s remembered that sound in his dreams innumerable times before, but somehow it’s different now.

“Cas?” He asks for an explanation without actually saying the words and Cas’s eyes are sad as they meet his. That happens all too often.

“I wish you hadn’t let this happen to yourself.” Cas says quietly, finally stretching out a hand to stroke Dean’s cheek. Dean’s eyes slide closed at the touch.

“Did you think I could be happy?” He whispers. Cas is closer now, both hands on Dean’s face, his breath hot across Dean’s lips.

“I had hoped.” Cas sighs. “I knew you’d blame yourself, but not to this scale.”

“Did you think I could just forget you and move on?” Dean’s breath is choked now, unshed tears clogging his throat.

“I had hoped.” Cas repeats, sad and soft. His hands move from Dean’s face to his back and pull Dean tight to Cas’s chest. Dean lets himself nuzzle Cas’s neck in a way he was loath to do when he had the opportunity, so convinced he had to keep his non-sexual touches to the barest minimum out of some ridiculous notion of self-preservation or machismo. He doesn’t care about that anymore because he ruined it once and refuses to ruin it in his dreams.

“This isn’t a dream, you know.” Cas says almost conversationally, nosing at Dean’s hair and clutching at Dean’s hips.

“What do you mean?” Dean pulls back a little to look quizzically into Cas’s face, beautiful and unlined as the day they met.

“I’m here.” Cas smiles a little and pulls Dean in for a soft kiss that makes Dean’s eyes sting with tears. He knows instantly Cas is telling the truth, and he is suddenly filled with desperation. He doesn’t want Cas to see him like this, a shell of himself. He is embarrassed by the lines around his eyes and mouth, the gray of his hair, the paunch in his belly, the cloud of whiskey-scent that hovers around him perpetually. Cas had been better than this and would have fared better, had their roles been reversed. Cas would have handled it. His grief would have been beautiful and dignified, not wild and ugly and scary and overpowering.

“Oh, Dean.” Cas breathes, the only person who can make Dean’s name sound like a holy word, held sacred and revered in that mouth. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’m sorry.” Dean chokes out, and Cas raises long fingers to press over his lips.

“I know.” He says, not bothering with the _it’s not your fault_ s and _please don’t blame yourself_ s that he knows will mean nothing to Dean. “I’m sorry, too. I tried to stay with you, but I couldn’t. I was too weak. I wish you wouldn’t have been alone for so long.” He doesn’t mention the brief period Dean spent living with a woman named Sarah, who was funny and sweet but not Cas and didn't know a thing about who Dean really was and it had all fallen apart in months because of Dean’s anger and Dean’s drinking and Dean’s picture of Cas in his wallet.

“How are you here now?” Dean asks into Cas’s mouth as he kisses him again. He can’t seem to make himself stop and he can’t seem to make himself care. He is a drowning man and Cas’s mouth is the only air that exists, so he will gulp it greedily now that he’s found it.

“I tried to get to you, you know.” Cas is avoiding the question and that makes Dean nervous. “I tried to find a way to get back to you. But you did your job perfectly, and there were no holes.” He smiles at Dean, not angry but _proud_ , proud that Dean had done it right even though it meant he was trapped.

“Did they hurt you?” Dean has to ask, because he needs to know how much to hate himself. Cas threads his fingers in Dean’s hair and kisses the space between his eyes.

“Yes.” He doesn’t bother to coat the bitter pill. He’d never been particularly good at that, anyway, and it makes Dean ache and feel fond at the same time.

“Bad?” Dean fills his hands with the fabric of that damned trench coat, just one in the list of things that are quintessentially Cas.

“At first.” Cas admits. “They used you to hurt me. They learned that from Naomi.” His eyes are distant and close enough to broken that Dean whispers his name to bring him back. Cas smiles sadly again but his eyes are focusing and that’s what Dean needs. “There will be plenty of time to talk about it later.” Cas tells him, letting a hand sneak up under the fabric of Dean’s ratty, sweat-stiff shirt to touch his skin.

“Are you going to see Sam?” Dean asks, something hovering at the edge of his subconscious of why Cas is here. Cas’s smile turns affectionate at Sam’s name and he looks wistfully toward a picture of Sam that Dean keeps on the wall.

“Not yet.” He says, pulling his hand from Dean’s shirt and gently untangling himself from Dean’s grasp. Suddenly Dean knows how Cas is there, knows _why_ Cas is there, and his throat feels tight with the knowledge.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye.” Dean says faintly, looking at the picture of Sam and his family. “But when I have ever?” He adds, a touch of bitterness creeping into his voice. Cas takes his hand and it steadies him.

“You didn’t do much to prolong this day, Dean.” There is a little reproach buried in there that makes Dean smile despite himself because it’s _Cas_. Dean can see his body now, still in the armchair, shoulders rounded and chin slumped down onto his chest. The bottle is on the table beside him and Cas’s picture is in his hands.

“Were you watching?” Dean asks as his free hand finds the line of Cas’s chin.

“After a while. When I…” Cas looks away for a beat, swallows, and Dean can feel the hurt in his own chest. “When I was released.” Dean’s stomach clenches at the word and all its implications and he can’t bear to not kiss Cas again. A distant part of himself is scorning all this emotion, but he tells it to shut up. Dean has waited for this for almost thirty years. He will act out every scenario in every chick flick he’s ever seen if he wants to, and he’ll be damned if he won’t kiss Cas a thousand times a minute.

“I’m sorry you had to watch me like this.” Dean says softly. Cas rests his forehead against Dean’s. Their fingers are still entwined.

“I was going through a comparable experience.” Cas explains. “Without the physical ramifications, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Dean echoes, gently mocking. Cas bumps his head against Dean’s a little in retribution and the sound of his own laugh makes Dean start.

“You didn’t do so bad.” Cas reassures him. “You still have people who love you. You didn’t alienate Sam. I was most worried for that. But you did alright with Sam and his wife and daughter.”

“Thanks for the glowing report.” Dean’s sarcasm is tempered by his lips finding every inch of the skin on Cas’s face. Cas breathes deeply and then pulls away.

“Are you ready?” He asks gently, so gently Dean knows he can say _no_ and stay a little longer, but there’s no point. He feels no emotional tug to wander the rooms of that house; if he had been at Sam’s house, maybe, or if Sam and the girls were there. But as it is, Dean is sitting alone in an armchair in his earth life, and he’s standing wrapped up in Cas in his death. It isn’t a tough decision.

“Is there any way I can tell them I got you in the end?” Dean asks, and it’s horrifyingly sappy but he doesn’t care because he’s dead anyway.

“I’m not supposed to leave any mark here.” Cas says, and Dean fights the disappointment blooming in his chest. He’d wanted so much for Sam to get some peace of mind over his sorry ass. “It was very difficult to get special permission to come down to get you.” He pauses and thinks for a minute and Dean waits patiently, suddenly so patient now though he’d never been in life. “But when have I ever followed the rules?” Cas bestows Dean with an actual grin and Dean laughs out loud with joy at the sight of it.

“Should I write a note or something?” Dean wonders, making Cas scoff a little. It’s a little gentler than Dean is used to, because they’re giddy and being careful with one another for now, but it’s so absolutely the Cas that Dean remembers. His cheeks ache from smiling so much after going so long with bare-bones smiles, and he wants to complain about death not being painless but it’s such a light, blissful pain that he can’t bring himself to protest.

“Your body can’t hold a pen anymore, Dean, and you’re now incorporeal so your soul can’t, either.” Cas rolls his eyes and Dean has to kiss him again. He thinks he wouldn’t even be embarrassed if Sam saw all this cheesiness.

“Well, what then?” Dean loves that they’ve fallen back into their bickering, though there’s no heat in any of it. They’re both grinning like fools through it all. Cas squints as he thinks and Dean feels breathless. Then again, Dean doesn’t feel any urge to breathe anymore, so he thinks maybe he’s just feeling high, intoxicated on Cas, inebriated with joy. Cas reaches behind himself and his hand reemerges holding a single feather.

“Did you just pull your own feather out?” Laughter bubbles out of Dean because he keeps thinking of all the times he said something about Cas’s feathery ass and he wonders, almost hysterically, where Cas pulled the feather from. Cas just gives him a look that says _shut up_ and _stop laughing_ and _I love you_ all in one.

“Yes.” Cas says, and he’s trying to sound dignified while Dean is laughing at him.

“I can’t believe you’re giving Sam an ass-feather as a memento. I didn’t even get one of those.” Dean pretends to be jealous and Cas’s face quickly falls into its old expression that says Dean is cruising for a bruising, but it’s hard to believe with Cas’s hand warm and solid in his.

“Do you think he’ll understand what it means?” Cas asks, and Dean hears a faint note of worry. He remembers that he sometimes forgets Cas and Sam were good friends, and that Sam mourned Cas, and that Cas must’ve missed Sam, and he’s suddenly filled with a desperate need to make sure Sam gets the message, for Sam and Cas both.

“Here.” Dean takes the feather from Cas, marveling at how it catches the light, and rests the feather on his body’s shoulder. It’s strange, looking at his own corpse, old and worn down, so tired and beaten, when his soul is suddenly thirty again and light and happy and full of Cas’s eyes and Cas’s face and the curve of Cas’s lips. He can’t see his own soul, but he’s sure it’s the blue he loves most and if souls have a sound his is Cas’s voice. Cas smiles at Dean’s body, gently touching a hand to the steel-gray hair at his temples, tracing a line in the crow’s feet that mark the skin at the corner of his eyes.

“I know you hated getting old.” Cas says softly. “But you’ve always been the best looking person to me. At every age.” Dean knows he doesn’t say _beautiful_ even though he wants to because Dean had protested the word long ago.

“Sap.” Dean teases lightly, bumping his shoulder into Cas.

“Are you ready?” Cas repeats, smiling into Dean’s eyes. “We can watch them from up there. Our house has a window that looks down onto Sam’s life.”

“Was that against the rules?” Dean asks suspiciously, and Cas winks the way he’d winked in life—not even a little subtle but instead completely conspicuous. Dean doesn’t look back at his body as Cas takes his hand and they ascend. It’s a bit slow and dramatic and Dean’s pretty sure Cas is doing it that way on purpose for his sake, a thought confirmed by the way Cas is watching his face eagerly. That eagerness bleeds over to the tour Cas gives Dean of their house— _their_ house, _their_ heaven—and promises him that later they can go visit Bobby and Dean’s parents, the latter of which makes his eyes go wide with anticipation and anxiety.

“Oh, look.” Cas points to the window in the living room that fits up a space that would normally hold a TV. It’s the Sam Channel, and their hero is currently opening Dean’s door with his spare key, muttering about Dean’s drunken stupors and failing liver.

He doesn’t notice the feather at first, frantically feeling for a pulse and yelling Dean’s name. Dean buries his face in Cas’s collarbone as Sam breaks down in tears, whimpering for Dean. Dean doesn’t have a body anymore, but he swears he feels a physical pull to go back, to pick Sam up like he’s a toddler again, to wipe away his tears and make jokes until he laughs and make him some lunch. Cas rubs soothing circles into Dean’s back, but Sam’s distress is making Cas’s lips draw together, too.

The feather slips from Dean’s shoulder at Sam’s jostling and floats in a lazy spiral onto Sam’s face. Sam gasps a little, and it makes Dean laugh while tears fill his eyes because Sam can still be such a cartoon character sometimes. He watches Sam pick up the feather gingerly, reverently, and he looks down at the picture in Dean’s cold hands. His eyes go huge in his face and he looks so much like that goofy kid Dean knew he clenches his teeth to keep from crying out.

“Cas?” Sam whispers, and then he’s smiling through his tears, laughing a little. “I can’t believe you left me an ass-feather.”

“I don’t know why you guys say that when I don’t even _have_ feathers on my ass.” Cas huffs while Dean roars with laughter.

Watching his own funeral is strange, and Dean is surprised by how many people show up. He hurts as he watches tears rolling down his niece’s cheeks, but a note of happiness undercuts everything, most of all Sam. There are pictures of Dean in his youth, and pictures of him with Cas sprinkled throughout the decorations—grainy, secretly-taken photos from one of Sam’s hundreds of cell phones, Dean can tell—and as they’re closing the lid of Dean’s casket Sam hurries over and slips the feather into Dean’s pocket.

Dean is happy to wait the fifteen years it takes for Sam’s time to come. They watch as Cassandra goes to college, as she graduates and meets a boy with a quick laugh and gentle eyes. They watch as Sam holds his new grandson, rubs his nose against that soft cheek and whispers, “Hi there, Dean.” They get crushing hugs from Bobby and Dean shyly introduces Cas to his parents, who, he discovers, have already met Cas because Cas broke the rules and let them come watch Sam and Dean. Dean is now mature enough to admit he cries when he sees his mother and some more when his father claps a hand on Cas’s shoulder. And every night, Dean curls into Cas’s side and drinks in Cas’s eyes and breathes in Cas’s lips and he is _happy_ , deliciously so, deliriously so. His chest is metaphorical now, technically, but that isn’t why Dean doesn’t feel the old ache. Dean knows he is healed, he is _whole_ , after such a long time.  
  
The wars are long over, and Dean is finally home.


End file.
